Organizations

[Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is Senior Manager for Africa with the Open Society Justice Initiative. He received his Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics & Political Science and is a former Chair of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission.] The invocation of sanctions against senior officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the Trump administration in 2020, has been the subject of considerable examination and...

[Nabil M. Orina is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for International Courts (iCourts), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. He holds a PhD from City University of Hong Kong.] President Trump’s sanctions against the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (the Court), Fatou Bensouda and the Head of Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division, Phakiso Mochochoko have rightly attracted condemnation from states as well...

[Sharon Nakandha is a Program Officer with the Africa Regional Office of the Open Society Foundations.] ‘The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC and we certainly will not join...

[Oumar Ba is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Morehouse College.] On 2 April 2021, President Biden rescinded the sanctions that the Trump administration had imposed on Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko – the two most senior African officials in the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor. These sanctions were preceded by visa restrictions on ICC personnel in 2019 and a visa ban on Bensouda. Sanction regimes...

[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg.] Those Sanctioned… and Those Not Sanctioned The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as currently structured has five persons at the helm, the Prosecutor, Deputy Prosecutor and three division directors (investigations; jurisdiction, complementarity and cooperation (JCCD); and prosecutions). Two of these persons, the Prosecutor Ms Fatou...

[Sharon Nakandha is a Program Officer with the Africa Regional Office of the Open Society Foundations and Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg.] In March 2020, following a decision of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which authorised the Prosecutor to open an investigation in Afghanistan, Mike Pompeo, then-Secretary of State of the United...

[Ahmad Helmi is a survivor of torture and three years detention in the Syrian regime’s detention centers, and is the co-founder and manager of Ta’afi, a survivor-led and centered initiative supporting survivors of detention.] [Brigitte Herremans is a researcher at Justice Visions, an ERC project on Victim Participation in Transitional Justice, which is hosted at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University.] [Veronica Bellintani...

[Andrea Marilyn Pragashini Immanuel is an Assistant Professor of Legal Practice and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Interest Law, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, India.]Acknowledgment: I am grateful to Aashish Yadav, Lecturer, Jindal Global Law School for his valuable comments on a draft of this article. Photo Credit: Nate Kitch, The Guardian On 26 February 2021,...

  [Cuno Jakob Tarfusser served as Judge of the International Criminal Court from 2009 to 2020. During his tenure, he was also its Vice-President and President of the Pre-Trial Division. As Pre-Trial Judge, sitting in both PT Chambers, he was in charge of all situations and cases the Court dealt with.] [Giovanni Chiarini is a PhD candidate at University of Insubria (Como...

[Rhona Smith is Professor of International Human Rights at Newcastle Law School.]Photo credit: Rhona Smith The précis presented herein is simple, all States are obliged both to ‘build back better’ in the wake of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and to be better prepared for COVID-19, any future variations and indeed other pandemics. These obligations are grounded in international laws and frameworks...

[Liana Georgieva Minkova recently defended her PhD at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, UK, and holds a full award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Doctoral Training Partnership.] On March 30th the International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber confirmed the conviction and sentence of Bosco Ntaganda. The judges decided to use this opportunity to...

Photo credit: Gaël Grilhot/RFICaption:  The President of the Special Criminal Court, Michel Landry Louanga, opens the Court's inaugural session on 22 October 2018. [Julian Elderfield is an international lawyer and worked in Bangui, Central African Republic for  the Special Prosecutor of the Special Criminal Court from 2019-2021. Previously, he worked in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court....